Type: Tomb Stone
Townland: The Grove, Dingle
The ‘Desmond Stone’ is a coffin-shaped lid (Length 1.67m x Width 0.85m x T 0.11m) of an early 16th-century stone sarcophagus possibly covering the grave of Gearóid FitzGerald lying in the eastern quadrant of St. James’s graveyard to the south-east of St James’s Church in Dingle, Co. Kerry.
Decorated with three heraldic shields, the upper containing the arms of the FitzGeralds, in which a boar and a griffin support an ermine saltire gules.
The shield blow this contains a heart with letters: HM. KT. H, no longer decipherable, the third shield bears a saltire with dexter arm and hand holding a pike. At the base of the slab there is a Latin cross with the Christogram INRI.
The inscription B. S. E. C. ( S)A INDEOAOA beneath it.
Marginal inscription:
TRINITAS: INDIVIDVA:SALVA:NOS/ O:PATER:M:N.P.ET.I.NAM.AMEN 1504. BEO.B. GAR/ DIE.LE.G/ & separate from the main inscription, the letters EAT. S/ and S.L. The meaning of the inscription is obscure. Smith suggested “God Give the Fitzgerald’s long life”.
Isabel Bennett